Frangerian Navy

[Battlegrinder]

Ok, I've just completed work on the first new ship, the Heimdallr Class Assault Carrier, based on the USS Keokuk. Unlike the Magni, which carries only enough weaponry to deter attackers, the Heimdallr is equipped to go toe to toe with anything short of a battleship. It carries two heavy PHASE canons, 6 PHASE cannon turrets, and 22 light PHASE turrets. While under-armed compared to conventional battleship, the Heimdallr can pound most lighter vessels to scrap with ease using it's heavier guns, and with adroit use of it's fighter and bomber squadrons, can engage capital ships and emerge victorious. And finally, it's massive array of light PHASE cannons can provide point defense for an entire battlegroup in conjunction with the Heimdallr's fighter craft.







Side by side with Tyr, Magni, and Tyrant carrier.

[loafofcheese]

Finally a Carrier with some actual point defense and some offensive capabilities.

[Battlegrinder]

Finally a Carrier with some actual point defense and some offensive capabilities.

Glad you like it. I'm still tinkering with the design before I finalize it (for example, I've decreased the height of the the two gunnery towers), but I'm not planning on altering the weapons layout. I'm hoping this hybrid design works better than the standard carrier (which I've noticed are often locked into their role, and tend to be both underused and vulnerable because of it). The idea behind this this was to make a carrier that could provide fighter and bomber support for the fleet, but be tough enough that I wouldn't have to assign a bunch of lighter ships to cover it.

[Silverdream]

Finally a Carrier with some actual point defense and some offensive capabilities.

Not sure if trolling, this is one of the lightest armed carriers I've seen. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, this is one of the better ships I've seen in the Frangerian Navy in terms of design, but compared to many other carriers it lacks firepower.

[Battlegrinder]

While the Protectorate's shipyards are for the most part able to keep up with demand for lighter vessels (though not to the point that ships like the Redeemer and Cataphract are no longer required to fill the gaps), building heavy ships is much more of a challenge. Dreadnoughts in particular are in short supply, and due to the resilience of most hostile super-capitals, the Frangerians are usually forced to pound an opposing dreadnought into scrap metal in order to knock them out of the fight, so opportunities to salvage them are rare. In order to meet demands, the Protectorate turned to its trading partners in the Britannian Empire to find a solution. The result was the Edinburgh MK IIA, a variant of the Edinburgh L.A.D. designed for use in the Frangerian Navy (where it is known as the Paladin Class Fast Attach Dreadnought, or F.A.D.).







While the general hull shape is similar, the Paladin incorporates a number of new design elements that make it an entirely different beast compared to it's Britannian cousin.




One of the most noticeable alterations was the removal of the Edinborough's missile complement, as the Protectorate Navy Logistical Corps balked at the idea of trying to keep the fleet supplied with the thousands of replacement missiles it would need. Instead, the Paladin mounts four Rift Cannons as its primary armament, along with a handful of Fenris missiles.




The Paladin does retain the Hellhammer cannon used on the Edinborough, which when combined with the ship's Rift and PHASE cannons, gives it enough firepower to slag anything short of a Deity-class star juggernaut in a single volley under ideal circumstances.




The Paladin carries PHASE cannons in place of the Battle Cannon's mounted on the Edinborough, including a set of four Heavy Phase Cannon Turrets mounted on the ring. The ship's reactor core required extensive modification in order to power the new, more power-hungry Frangerian weaponry. This also means that the Paladin can't be deployed on covert missions, as the new reactor cranks its energy emissions up to the point that it's almost impossible to not detect a Paladin with even passive sensors.




The final modification was to the Edinborough's engines. A pair of engines salvaged from Scythian Tyrant carriers were mounted to the Paladin's hull, giving it a massive speed advantage over most other super-capitals. This did necessitate the removal of the Edinborough's fighter bay, which in turn means the Paladin requires an escort of lighter vessels or carriers, but the Frangerian Naval Bureau felt the trade off was worthwhile.

[Battlegrinder]

Finally a Carrier with some actual point defense and some offensive capabilities.

Not sure if trolling, this is one of the lightest armed carriers I've seen. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, this is one of the better ships I've seen in the Frangerian Navy in terms of design, but compared to many other carriers it lacks firepower.

Really? Aside from the Prestatyn carrier and the Immortal assault carrier, I can't think of any other carriers that pack enough firepower to challenge the Heimdallr. The Heimdallr might not carry a lot of heavy guns, but it has enough light PHASE cannons to put out a hilarious volume of fire.

I'm glad you like the design, though. Out of curiosity, what exactly did you like about it?

[Silverdream]

Spoiler

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[Battlegrinder]

Spoiler

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Ok...that'll do it (though I'd point out that the Der Stachel is more of a supercarrier, so you can't really compare it to a mere carrier).

[Battlegrinder]

Gentlemen, the supercarrier arms race has a new contender (I'd say winner, but LDD crashes if I try to load the Nimitz and this ship at the same time to check), depending on how you define "supercarrier". The Eir Class Mobile Repair and Rearmament Station is the product of intense collaboration between the Frangerian Navy and the Immortals. Created to address the problem of IA battlefleets being forced to make the sometimes months long journey back to to their homeworlds for refitting and repair, the Eir provides a solution by bring the shipyard to the frontlines. Equipped with advanced fabrication and salvage systems, the Eir can scrap badly damaged ships and use the raw materials to create spare parts, or even build entirely new ships in the field. Immortal fleets yards have began churning out this vessels, and most IA members have at least one in their fleet. The pictures below are of the version used by the Frangerian Navy.






While deploying one in an active battlefield is risky due to the system-bankrupting expense of building an Eir, the ship is armed for battle, with dozens of heavy and standard PHASE cannon batteries on the upper hull, meaning it packs enough firepower to slag anything save the strongest super-dreadnoughts. The Eir's six side repair bays (behind the black 16X16 panels on the sides) can accommodate almost any IA vessel below cruiser size, and larger vessels can dock at the elevated dry-dock platforms on the upper hull. It's massive engine cores are powered by some of the largest black hole generators in the galaxy, giving this behemoth enough thrust to move at a reasonable speed for a ship of its size.




Eir Mobile Repair Yard with Heimdallr, Mangi, and Tyr docked.

[Silverdream]

Nice. I'm digging the new hull design. How many fighters can it hold?

[Battlegrinder]

Nice. I'm digging the new hull design. How many fighters can it hold?

It's designed as a repair station, not a fighter carrier, so I haven't really checked (also, LDD might crash again if I did check). The repair bays can hold one Ullr, two or three Forsetis, and maybe a half dozen or so Hlíns though, and it can build and launch new ones very quickly. Based on the internal volume of the bays, they could probably hold at least 300 fighters each, so the whole ship could carry about 1800, as a conservative estimate.

Glad you like the hull design, I'm going to go back in and try to do a little more work on it, hopefully in way that won't make LDD crash once the part count gets above 6k.

[Battlegrinder]

Ok, I managed to make some improvements to the Eir, mostly smoothing out the the upper hull and adding nameplate to the repair bays. I also got a count of how many fighters it can hold. Each of the eight bays can hold a maximum of 3240 fighters, so if if all eight bays are packed with fighters, the total number would be 25,920 (and that doesn't count the internal volume of the Eir, which is easily 4 or 5 times the volume of the bays) . Which means that the Eir is the largest supercarrier in in the forums.

[Battlegrinder]

Ok, I managed to get a side by side with the Nimitz, which is now the 2nd biggest super-carrier on the forums. I think the Eir is a little longer, and is definitely taller, wider, and far better armed. Number 1, Number 1, Number 1!

[cleanupcrew]

[]

[Battlegrinder]

If B'lack Obama weren't too busy getting sued by his own Congress and drowning in illegal space-Latino orphans, the United Systems Alliance would probably declare war on the Frangerian Protectorate for its outsize insolence.

The mandate is clear.

The USA needs to roll out the space Gerald Ford-class megacarrier.

Since the Protectorate is part of the Immortal Alliance, I think the USA has already declared war on them.